"Never experiment on an animal if a man will do" and "never ask anyone to do anything you wouldn't do yourself" were two pieces of advice that J.B.S. "Jack" Haldane (1892–1964) offered to scientists—and followed himself. He and his father inhaled poisonous gases to test the efficacy of the prototype gas mask they had invented; while breathing gases under pressure, he suffered the smoking ears and screaming teeth of this book's title. Trevor Norton here relates this and other such stories that are equally astonishing, disturbing, or absurd, including that of the surgeon who was shamed and dismissed, but subsequently won the Nobel Prize for thrusting a catheter into his own beating heart.